Piranha Bytes - Gothic Interview @ Gothicz.net

Originally Posted by Brother None
It looks more like they're developing Risen down another path, with the whole pirates and guns things, so that it is more distinct from Gothic as a franchise.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by rune_74
These guys were also responsible for gothic 3 so I'm not sure what to think we will get for a part 4.

Why? PB is clear they made mistakes (see numerous interviews) and you can see their reaction with Risen: a very conservative design. Why would you think G3 would have any bearing when they have been clear about their mistakes and there is a game since then showing opposite design intent?

Personally, I enjoyed G3. I think it deserves acknowledgement for what they tried to do, even if they didn't quite get it right.

Yeah, I agree with those saying Risen is being taken down a different path so that they have two different worlds to work on. Risen should be a more light-hearted pirate adventure while Gothic is traditional dark fantasy.

Gothicz.net: What is your opinion on today's trend of developing role-playing games? RPGs are simplier than before and the grapics is mostly the most important game feature. And that's wrong, I think. Do you think it is today possible to release a successful old-school RPG at all?

Mike: Play Fallout 3 - or New Vegas - or both. Then you have your answer.

That might annoy some people who like to look down on the newer Fallout games

Mike: I always used to plan in 5-year steps. Now another of these steps reaches its conclusion with Risen 2. After that, I REALLY would like to do a different kind game - at least a different kind of setting. Pirates are cool but still too close to the fantasy setting imho, which i have been working on for 10 years now.

Given that answer, I wonder what future either of the two franchises has. Or Mike at PB.

The smart thing to do, would be to hold on to the Gothic brand - and then focus on Risen for the time being.

If anything should happen in the future with their current publisher - or if for some reason Risen doesn't work - they have something great to fall back on. Franchises like Gothic take a LONG time to fade from memory.

Sounds to me like Mike wants a long break from fantasy CRPGs - and possibly the entire open world genre.

This could mean many things, but I hope it just means he wants to do sci-fi RPGs instead or something

If he starts developing Facebook or iPhone "cute apps" - I'm going to have to shoot someone.

In any case, it makes very little sense to develop Risen and Gothic concurrently with their relatively small team. I'd hate for PB to fall into the human/US-favored "size above all trap" and lose creative integrity and the firm hand on their great work.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
This could mean many things, but I hope it just means he wants to do sci-fi RPGs instead or something

I would love to see a sci-fi RPG from these guys, or even just something different like steampunk or asian themed. I get pretty bored of the standard fantasy settings myself sometimes and anything that changes it up intrigues me.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
If he starts developing Facebook or iPhone "cute apps" - I'm going to have to shoot someone.

I can understand that many devs are tempted by this. There's this swedish guy who made an app for iphone where you press a button and there's different fart sounds, he became a multi millionaire in no time. I read an article that said that the more popular fart apps on iphone easily pulls in $10.000 a day. Unbelievable.

Originally Posted by bemushroomed
I can understand that many devs are tempted by this. There's this swedish guy who made an app for iphone where you press a button and there's different fart sounds, he became a multi millionaire in no time. I read an article that said that the more popular fart apps on iphone easily pulls in $10.000 a day. Unbeliavable.

If Mike was in it for the money, we wouldn't have had Gothic.

Then again, all men tire eventually.

He certainly contributed a lot - so who can blame him if he wants to give up creative integrity for easy comfort.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Cameron and Scott being some of the saddest in terms of directors

Cameron was always looking to be a mainstream money-maker and his best movies were all pretty popular, so I don't know about including him in there. I mean yeah, The Terminator was basically an indie movie, but it was made to appeal to a large crowd and his movies after that were all mainstream successes.

Originally Posted by DoctorNarrative
Cameron was always looking to be a mainstream money-maker and his best movies were all pretty popular, so I don't know about including him in there. I mean yeah, The Terminator was basically an indie movie, but it was made to appeal to a large crowd and his movies after that were all mainstream successes.

I don't know what his motivation was - really, and neither do you.

What I do have, though, is my experience listening to him speak "behind the scenes", during interviews - and his director commentaries. If you listen to him at the time of Terminator and Aliens - you'll hear a very talented and passionate film-maker who cares greatly about his stories and characters. He was always a perfectionist in terms of the technical details - and I'm sure that hasn't changed. He strikes me as a tech-nerd more than anything, and I guess that's what he's chosen to focus on exclusively these days.

But his movies are no longer innovative in any other way than technically - and I greatly miss his strong characterisations and unique plots. He had some great dialogue in the past, and his characters brought new things to the table.

How much he cares about money, I don't know. Seems to me he just wants to be "the big guy" in terms of budget and the spectacle. An ego thing, if I read him correctly. I doubt money was ever the main thing for him.

But somewhere along the way, and in my opinion after Aliens - he became a boring director in terms of character/story/plot and it's gotten steadily worse.

I think he's all about breaking barriers in terms of the spectacle - and I think he greatly enjoys the attention.

Maybe if I cared about such things, I might not be so hard on him - but I just want good sci-fi - and I'm not getting it.

No. We used only tiny bits. When the addon was cancelled, we couldN't use much - we had to start from scratch.

There was supposed to be an add-on? I had no idea. I would've loved an add-on to Gothic.

Oh, yes, and there were the 4 Frineds of the Hero, which were supposed to have a secret meeting later in the game which never occured becauce we had no more time. Other than that (an a coouple of bugs) I'm quite satisfied with our first work.

I figured as much. There's a quest to bring them all together for a secret meeting, yet it never takes place. A shame.

About the development cost. Gothic 1 cost several millions and brought back only a few of them. With Gothic 2 we got that money back and achieved our break-even. With the addon, we actually started to make a bit of money.

Hmm, Gothic actually lost money? Glad they still managed to develop G2 and get the ball rolling. I certainly hope their economy is healthy today.

The Magic barrier was created by 12 magicians, Xardas being one of them! When Xardas left the old camp, there were only 5 Mages left.. So they took Milten as an apprentice, when he was thrown into the prison after the barrier had been created. There is a dialogue in the game where one of the mages gets the numbers wrong. I think it was Saturas… I noticed that error, fixed it and some ex-team member of mine "fixed" it back because he didn't understand the background. There is no missing mage. The guy just messed it up

AHA!! So the mystery has been solved once and for all. There was no 13th magician! Sounds a bit odd that noone noticed the "fix" despite the game being voiced in several languages, especially considering the fact that the English VOs were done after the German ones. Ah well, the important thing is that we do have an answer now: It's a bug, as expected.

As for the whole Gothic vs Risen thing. I agree with the folks that claim they are too similar. The people that bought Gothic are the same people that bought Risen. They'd gain nothing by switching back to Gothic. Of course, they could develop them at the same time, but to what gain? If they actually had two teams working on two different titles, they might as well do something different with the team that's not working on a Risen/Gothic-like game.

Edit: I suppose they could do what Bethesda did with Fallout - let someone else develop it. That's the only option of us seeing Risen and Gothic being kept seperate in my opinion.

I like how brief and to the point some of Mike's replies were. He just tells it like it is without trying to sugarcoat anything..

Gothicz.net: You were planning Gothic as a trilogy, but despite of that Gothic 3 had an open ending. Why did you make this decision? Was JoWooD involved in it, because they might not wanted to end a series, which was actually on the top that time?

I found vanilla FO3 pretty much unplayable by my standards. It's about as "casual" as an RPG could possibly be. Fantastic experience when properly modded though.

Based on the mods you listed recently (IIRC), the changes you needed were actually rather subtle, but they clearly made all the difference to you. I know developers hate offering too many options, but maybe they should think more about these aspects, especially if they don't intend to release modding tools.